Saturday, June 14, 2008

In the Pipeline...

Some ideas about what's going on at LotFP: RPG as far as original published works...

The Creature Generator has been picked up for re-release, into retail stores, by a larger publisher... no names as of yet as they want to wait until there's a release date before making an announcement.

Deranged and Insane: The Lunatics of the Stone Hold Asylum adventure is currently in production. The artwork has been commissioned (Aino Purhonen again, with maps by Matthew James Stanham), as has the writing for the prop journal. The writing of the Asylum location is mostly done as well, which wasn't difficult since I'd had the entire thing written up for my home campaign in the first place.

Insect Shrine of Goblin Hill. I really need to cut the bullshit and get this done. I mean, really. It's a lot of different things thrown together, it is an ambitious project, but all of the personal grief that's now associated with this needs to be bypassed. I've commissioned 10 pieces of artwork from another local artist, Laura Kristiina Jalo (sample work here), so as that starts coming in, it should re-ignite my passion for getting it done... reading through some of the stuff I have here (I haven't even looked at the actual goblin hill/insect shrine bit in quite awhile) is just NUTS and I really need to let people see it. Some of the material from the inn portion of Insect Shrine has been submitted to Fight On! and hopefully it'll be in the upcoming issue.

And then I have crazy ideas for the next thing. (That's me, looking too far ahead, too soon!)

Buccaneers of the Bahamas!

OK, let me explain. This idea has been batting around my head for quite awhile. It would feature a few things:

Frequent, if not constant, use of all those naval rules that never seem to get used. And lots of underwater action.

Random island generation allowing for ongoing "sandbox" play and plenty of weird options - something that can be used for any seagoing adventures in any campaign, not just for use with this adventure (I'm real big on that, adventures that have material useful for more than just that adventure).

A hands-off moral approach. The setting for the adventure is going to be based on the Carribean, hell it might BE the Carribean to go for a real historical angle, and that means there are slaves all over the place. It will be upfront but the adventure will not pass judgement. It will even force some squickiness: Slaves are possessions which have value. The game gives experience for treasure gained. So some "treasure" will be... slaves. Will the PCs treat the slaves as property and therefore see them as a source of experience or not? An evil little question designed to create a little tension at the game table.

I'm hoping to have the Asylum thing out in the summer with Insect Shrine fast on its heels, and then if the seaborne adventure indeed follows that up (and I won't start work on that until the other two are FINISHED), before the end of the year.

4 comments:

Adventures at sea. Pirates, the smell of old grog and gun-powder. The crashing of the waves, and the screaming of brave young men being swallowed by the sea. That be the sound of treasure Mr. Reggi. TREASURE!

I don't know what it is about Pirates, but they've always interested me. I've longed to create a game with PC seadogs, they are featured in my current campaign, and this fact alone has earned me a few players who just had to show up to take part it the mayhem.

Heh... I love the way your evil mind works, James. For pirates, I'd prefer something that felt more medieval and less 18th century, but hells, I'm sure I could handle whatever conversion issues came up. And having an adventure that focuses on all the wonderful but rarely used seafaring rules is all kinds of awesome.